03-05-2023, 07:44 PM
She had stepped through the portal – glad to leave behind the tragic scene and the lingering scents of blood and magic – to find herself surrounded by more death. Lystra stopped immediately the moment that all four of her hooves touched by the ground of the Ruins. She hadn’t come here often, preferring the Forest where it was much easier to hide away between the heavy thickets and cluster of trees than the sparse (and eerie) openness of the strange land that rose when so many others had fallen.
So many souls fall here, before her, around her. There is a creature of the sky and they plummet towards one of the sea. The two elements collide, a clash of fury and wind and rage and water. The storm only stills when the winged avenger calls out – Lystra can’t tell if it is a name or a curse, but the way that it reverberates over the Ruins rings out with finality. It could only be a death knell. There are more, that collide and cry out and rage and roar, and then eventually, they fall.
One comes close, too close. Lystra turns, trying to keep out of the warpath of another Baltian and Stratosian battling. She sidesteps, nearly stumbling, before the thin membrane-like skin of the water-dweller passes through her like a ghost. The Stratosian pursues, striking through Lystra, and the sabino hears the crack of bone and the agonizing moments that follow as life struggles before it eventually flees.
This was a glimpse of something else, a moment already gone.
She was a ghost.
Her roan head turns, feeling a little bit warmth. It isn’t the sun trying to break through the clouds, but one of the small dancing lights; a sprite, Lystra realizes. It isn’t the only realization that she has: there are others. There are more sprites, flickering like distant stars, and revealing that she isn’t alone with the strange stones. A wound was caused here, and Lystra listens, trying to understand what the rift has to do with the battle that they were witnessing, what it has to do with all of them.
They must find the reason for all this senseless violence, for all this unbridled anger, because if they do not, then Beqanna will be the next to fall.
There are questions that come from the others. Lystra continues to listen as the others ask about what might have caused such a hatred; something that might have happened long before this battle that took place long before her own lifetime. One among them had been there, though. But not even the Baltian could not recall the source of this animosity. It was something that went back further than her memory, and as the questions continue, the Shadow Weaver begins to consider ones of her own.
The wound was created here.
"The stones?" she asks, realizing (again) just how far back in time they must have come, for the strange rock formations appear not yet tarnished by time and tragedy. "Might they have meaning to the Stratosians or the Baltians? Something to do with all of this?"
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